ADMINISTRATIVE SIMPLIFICATION FOR THE ECONOMY THROUGH THE CONCEPT OF BUSINESS EPISODES
The World Bank, with the support of the European Union and in partnership with the Government of the Republic of Serbia, is implementing the "EU for Better Business Environment – EU4BE" project. The main goal of the project is to support reforms for further improvement of the business environment in the Republic of Serbia. The project commenced in June 2021 and will run until June 2025, with a total project value of 5.5 million euros. Key project partners include the Ministry of Economy, the Republic Secretariat for Public Policies, the Ministry for European Integration, and other ministries and bodies of state administration.
The EU4BE project comprises three components:
- Establishment of a platform for coordinating reforms to enhance the business environment.
- Support for the optimization of administrative procedures and the legal framework.
The second component focuses on supporting the optimization of administrative procedures and administrative requests that economic entities must meet in their daily business operations, along with the improvement of the legal framework regulating administrative procedures and requests. The goal of the optimization process is to reduce the time and costs of business for economic entities, and to enhance the transparency and predictability of the business environment.
The EU4BE project refines the existing approach to optimizing administrative procedures by preparing in selected areas of economic activities. This aims to achieve a synergistic effect of optimization. Unlike the current approach, which focuses on simplifying and optimizing individual and mostly disconnected procedures, represent a set of interconnected administrative procedures and requests that economic entities need to fulfil in their business life (e.g., establishment, tax compliance, etc.). practically serve as a guide through administrative procedures and requirements from the establishment of an economic entity to the closing of business, in a specific economic area. In other words, they are an instrument for easier understanding of the obligations that entrepreneurs in specific areas need to fulfill and the rights they are entitled to. Once digitalized, will provide economic entities the opportunity to launch electronic services related to specific administrative procedures and requests.
Considering that experience, attitudes, and ideas of businesses are of huge importance for optimizing administrative procedures and requirements, continuous consultations with business entities are underway. The aim is to identify the most common challenges faced by micro, small, medium, and large economic entities and entrepreneurs in their daily business operations. So far, EU4BE, in collaboration with the Republic Secretariat for Public Policies and in coordination with the Chamber of Commerce Užice and the Chamber of Commerce Belgrade, has organized two focus groups with representatives of the economy. These focus groups were oriented towards gathering information on administrative procedures and requests that impose the highest burden on economic entities in selected industries. The sessions have covered experiences regarding compliance with administrative procedures and requests, challenges, suggestions for optimizing administrative procedures and request, etc.
In the coming period, work will continue on simplifying administrative procedures and requests relevant to created business episodes. Simultaneously, the process of recognizing and simplifying overly complex regulations will commence. The goal is to facilitate compliance with regulations for economic entities and enable simpler and faster business operations. Feedback from business representatives, along with conducted legal-economic analyses, will allow the EU4BE project team to fully understand issues and prepare recommendations for optimizing administrative procedures and requestswithin business episodes. The recommendations will be agreed with the competent institutions, which will implement them at the end of the process.